While true it just should have happened sooner. If they were just protecting the roots of Elun’ahir like it was implied in TWW this wouldn’t be a problem per say.
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I mean, yeah, you’re completely right on this.
Harandar tonally feels like a natural segway from pretty much everything else AWW. Even UM feels like it works because “yeah, its also a subterranean civilization, and one riddled with profit driven denizens who tend to drill their way into where they dont belong”. So, yeah, Harandar would have been great there.
K’aresh’s story placement feels weirder now, than it did when it was released TBH.
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why none of the roots showed issues till teld exploded
I mean, its like the concept of them begins and ends at some dev screaming “I like James Cameron’s Avatar!” Which means as much as the art team still carries so much of this game, because yeah the zone is pretty, so much of the Haranir feels like “bare-bones excuse to have the Na’vi in WoW … but the NEs dont count for some reason?”.
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I mean, James Cameron’s Avatar’s art is very different than usual Night Elf aesthetics.
They are different from nelves and the zone has alot to do with the titans and is very clearly setting up things that are gonna be important in TLT
They’re Na’vi, painted over to be plugged into the WoW. They look cool, and their zone is pretty, but that absolutely is what they are; which is part of why their writing is so clunky.
Frankly, latching them to ALL the World Trees, rather than just keeping them worshippers of the roots of the OG World Tree before the ordering, has done them no favors either.
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yeah and they arent nelves
Navi never had a magical empire
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That and they look nothing like the Na’vi. ONLY thing they have in common is both worship the soul of their world.
Yeah, the pivot has resulted in two supposedly Druidic cultures seeming like they’re too stupid to grasp that trees and roots are connected lol
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Like, Shaladrassil was corrupted by the Nightmare and it was spreading via its roots. We see that in Val’sharah through the roots that appeared above ground. If it wasn’t for us killing Il’gynoth and Xavius, the Nightmare would have spread to Harandar eventually and who knows what would have happened. It could have spread to the other world trees through their roots.
Not to mention that the Rift of Aln is where the Nightmare was truly based. But hey, they got to do nothing about the Nightmare while we did all the work because, “didn’t affect us, why should we care”.
Then the burning Teldrassil happened and suddenly, “wait, if the tree goes the roots do too. Did not see that coming. Oh well, who cares”.
You know, as an Aussie I wonder how the Haranir would react to seeing an Australian Fig Tree if they existed in WoW. As their roots do not go deep underground relative to other trees. Try protecting the roots of those trees while being afraid of the surface. Fun fact, the suburb north of where I live is called Figtree. Because it had a massive Aussie Fig Tree. Aussies come up with such original names, such as the Sydney suburb of Waterfall because… you guessed it… it has waterfalls.
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Yeah, this is the problem with shifting the Haranir’s worship from just the roots of the OG “Pre Ordering” World Tree, to ALL of the World Trees. As not only are pretty much all of the World Trees grown by, or in response to, NE … stuff. Not great stuff always either. What this amounts to is the Haranir’s culture is too entwined with the NE’s actions.
Nord has developed well beyond its initial purpose, but it was essentially a lock to prevent Illidan’s mess from exploding. And’s roots pierced Yogg’s prison, and created the Emerald Nightmare. Shala’s roots were used as a prison for another one of the NE’s “Lock it up and forget it” issues with Xavius and the Satyr’s. All but guaranteeing its corruption to the Nightmare. Teld was essentially an ego project designed to reclaim NEs immortality; and was only blessed by the Aspects as it was to prevent it from becoming a festering problem. Amir is fine.
This makes sense if James Cameron is on the wow writing team… otherwise I refuse to believe this was anything other than someone saw avatar and was like “I know nobody else was at all inspired by these movies… but…. we can do it worse.”
Correct it was datamined as a leveling zone for the beta of TWW and shown to be on the map west of Hallowfall and Ajhkahet, estimated to be that entrance at the collapsed lake.
The only reason we went to undermine was someone, I think ion but idr atp, said “we’re doing an underground zone? we HAVE to go to undermine.” And it was crammed in there. And I felt, and continue to feel, that Karesh makes absolutely no sense for the 3rd part of tww. It has basically nothing to do with the plot of the first season and barely anything to do with the 2nd’s raid. It’s basically a footnote as to how the two are connected to the black blood narrative, beledar, sargeras sword, etc.
Some of my favorite theories are that it was not azeroth. A lot more fun to think about really. But yes that does seem most likely, for now.
Right, I do lore theory videos and I actually predicted a lot of this and had a nagging obsession with world soul memories, nomenclature, the unseeming, and a “strange flower” that is identical to the one at the end of the emerald nightmare raid. I don’t think most people were interested in that though because we tend to treat world soul memories as boring “grind waves” stuff. Those that are lost to the unseeming are untuned to the song, nerubians cleanse themselves of it using “harmonizing instruments,” and those that never do are “Forgotten.” And the highest difficulty for world soul memories was “Discordant.”
I’ve got some like 30-50 min videos rambling about this stuff if you’re ever interested. I spend most my time looking at stuff like that. Sometimes I’m just rambling but sometimes I am actually cooking. I even said the rootlands/harandar is where the rift of aln is located outside of the dream. Explaining how I reached this conclusion and a thought experiment involving the concept that the dream mirrors our world meaning their is a non-dream location of the rift of aln. Harandar was the most likely location. I explain supporting evidence for this. I did all of this deduction when rootlands/harandar was just a name in a datamined file and a place eluded to by the haranir in s1 tww. We knew nothing about it except the environmental story telling left behind by the developers. Very subtle. And I’m sure you missed it.
You should take a look at those strange flowers, friend. And look at the one from the emerald nightmare. I think you know what this means will happen. The quest is “The Price of the Mission.” Thank me later. Or never. It’s all good really. If you wanna see my video it’s called “11.2 will be the rootlands.” I was wrong about that but I was right about everything else in that video afaik. (Edit: Actually watch at your own peril my first mic is terrible and I speedrun the script making it hard to follow, lol. Near to 3 min it gets normal and into the actual theory instead of history recap.)
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After finishing the zone they suffer heavily from being ripped away from TWW, pushing them into the one of BFA’s worst storylines, and they are also not Navi.
- The skybox was clearly suppose to be in shadows which would make both the bioluminescence life and their paintings pop just like in the player character haranir background. Since the sky was suppose to be in darkness with no change in day/night the change to the light bloom skybox leaves the zone in endless day making the evolution of bioluminescence life pointless
- The removal of black blood and replacing it with the worldsoul enemies. Removing the void from the zone along with the influence of the old gods. We know it was there in the haranir.
- They are remodeled dark trolls. In between Zandalari and Kaldorei. They maintain their Zandalari acsent and gain the proto druidic ways of the Kaldorei and a singular goddess as Zandalari druids bargain with their gods and have a wide pantheon. The shadow tooth clan, the only dark trolls we had in wow from Mount Hygal worshipped the Quilboar loa Agamaggen which would explain their spikes and how some but not all haranir have them. A blessing like that of the highmoutain tauren.
- As players we can choose how much Zandalari Troll traits they have and how many Kaldorei traits they have in the character creator. The only exception from this is their hands which we cannot change from 5-3 fingers and troll worts.
They are not an evolutionary off branch from dark trolls. We can make them nearly Zandalari but quite literally exactly Night elves/highborne. - Everything everyone mention above in the post about losing their original lore because the change from tww to midnight and the writers wanted to focus on teldrissel. Not seeing the Emerald dream’s nightmare hurts especially since the haranir’s painted look like they are depicting the nightmare.
I don’t think it was. I spent time exploring the out of bounds of the area where it was planned to be in TWW. There is a emerald dream type sky box out there where it was shown to be located in the data-mined files for tww that included the location. You can still go out of bounds and look around and eventually you’ll get an emerald-dream-type skybox that’s just some bright green not found elsewhere in any tww zone
Orweyna never said the black blood was in Harandar. She said the blood was killing or harming the roots of the trees they protect. We didn’t know what this meant as the Haranir refused to explain it.
The nightmare will come up. It has been hinted at since TWW. It’s just not the story for this season–that’s all about the void spire and silvermoon stuff. Blizzard said the end-of-tier raid would explain what is happening next going into s2 and it was revealed it’s a second raid taking place in harandar with some fungus creature. What they said and the location of the raid being in harandar probably means we’ll be dealing with all of that in s2. For right now they’re just introducing you to the zone and its problems and people.
I am disappointed that they completely failed to bring up all the trees though. Thassalah, Tal’doren, and many many many others. With shadowlands I can understand the scope of trying to explain where every single soul ended up would be a monumental waste of time so we don’t see the infinite after lives, just the main 5 of the pantheon of death. With rootlands though, guys it’s like 10 more trees you have to talk about. Probably 8 or less. Shouldn’t the Worgren be here??? The temple they slept in was devoured by a tree and the druid watching the tree says “the roots run deep.” Okay where tf are the mf’n worgen??? Shoot, I already know, blizz forgot.
Also yes Teldrassil makes sense to talk about. Read the book Stormrage. It was corrupted since it was created and piece of xavius was grafted onto it giving him a huge wealth of influence over the dream as he spread the nightmare. We should be thankful Sylvanas burned it that thing is a huge liability. Ilgynoth situation basically. Teldrassil was corrupted from day 1. So if they wanna bring up the nightmare, teldrassil, vordrassil, and mutants crawling out of the rifts is a good place to start
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It also doesn’t really fit the “theme” they wanted with TWW which was an underground expansion. Isle of Dawn was the main way we have access to the underground zones and Siren Isle was literally a filler zone.
K’aresh really should have stayed as a zone for Midnight. I will always say that Dimensius as the final raid antagonist was wasted with TWW. He basically had no build up. And I love the fight and the music.
At least Undermine is underground, we had Goblins doing things in the launch material, such as the Venture Co in Cinderbrew Meadery and we got our first glimpse of the Darkfuse in the 11.0 max level campaign.
The thing is, we still don’t know who payed Ky’vesa to assassinate Ansurek. Nor do we know who hired her to assassinate Salhadaar (as indicted by Saladaar’s meta achievement for Manaforge Omega). And who hired her to assassinate us and Brann?
So many unanswered questions!!! And I doubt they will be answered by the time this trilogy is done.
Not exactly. In the video (2026 state of Azeroth) Ion did indeed say the upcoming raid in 12.0.7 is a fungal themed raid in Harandar. However it has nothing to do with the main story and it only has 1 boss. 12.1 will most likely be Atal’Utek given early datamining revealed a warlock tier set labeled as “RaidWarlockUlatek” or something like that. Like how early TWW datamining revealed a tier set that foreshadowed Undermine and its raid.
https://www.wowhead.com/news/midnight-has-additional-mid-season-raids-in-patch-12-0-7-and-12-1-5-380136
https://youtu.be/pkFMkdZWxdk?si=o_0bOS3_yfArZQZQ&t=1347
https://www.wowhead.com/news/patch-12-1-raid-teased-new-tier-set-icons-on-midnight-alpha-379055
Weird how you tell someone to read stormrage, but you failed to mention how a significant chuck of the corruption that felled Teldrassil was removed by the novels end. Along with Ysera and Alexstrasza blessing the tree. Not to mention that the Cata questing in Teldrassil has the PC finish off the left over corruption that was still present.
Sylvanas burned down a cleansed, aspect blessed tree. Not a tree of Nightmare.
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Doesn’t help that the Na’vi aren’t the most developed or nuanced alien race in fiction (before the third movie, take a bunch of indigenous stereotypes, a bunch of furry stereotypes and a bunch of hippie stereotypes, throw them in a blender and color it blue and you’ve got the Na’vi).
Totally agreed. My theory is that TWW was still planning to have Dimensius as the final boss (IMO) as a single, standalone expansion, but it only felt disjointed because they tried to change the story to last further into a 2nd and 3rd expansion in this saga. My theory:
- Xal’atath was absolutely set up to be the Harbinger of Dimensius. Not just the void, but specifically Dimensius. This was at the end of DF.
- The Dark Heart was going to be purely the thing that summoned Dimensius. Not to absorb him. If the Dark Heart remained purely as an instrument to summon Dimensius, absorbing Galakrond and whatever they originally planned for Beledar (“Naaru Crystal”) would have way more weight.
My theory on how TWW was originally planned to unfold:
- 11.0 (including Harandar)
- 11.1 (Undermine potentially as a brief diversion, which is common in .1 patches)
- 11.2 (Beledar / Undersea / 5th Old God / something deep in the dark)
- 11.3 (Dimensius, but probably not K’aresh)
Unsure of where the Coreway would fit into this, but clearly Harandar sets up the fact that the Titans took Azeroth from the Cradle and shoved her down into the Coreway in a prison to contain her.
K’aresh, admittedly, felt tacked on. I don’t think K’aresh was there, originally. Given how Tazavesh was reused, and most of it largely felt empty or even uninspired. Maybe we would’ve fought Dimensius elsewhere.
The reason I mention the Undersea / 5th Old God is due to how much build-up there was regarding the black blood and the overall tentacle-y nature of TWW. Heck, even in the promo cinematic there was a Nerubian extracting the blood from an old God tentacle. The 5th Old God mural in City of Threads with a Dark Beledar-like crystal, etc.
Plus, in Harandar on the Forgotten Mural lorebook, it says:
“Never forget the sumbering darkness banished down below.”
Assuming Harandar was originally meant for TWW, this has to be a reference to the Undersea.
We’ll never know for sure given that they expanded TWW to be a 3-part trilogy, but after playing through Harandar it’s definitely interesting to see what TWW could have been.
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We go deep in the core of planet and thats where xalatath materizalizes Dimensius to try devour the world soul?
Also possible they couldve gone mroe iwth how legion impleid xalatath was a old god, and have her as 5th old god that leads to Dimensius
Xalatath animated the blackblood via Beledar in some way with the dark Heart, reanimating her old god self remains into somethign nto quite a proper odl god, that mleaves way open for her to get in coreway and Summon Dimensius to then have him devour the word soul
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